Why My Wife is Not Invited to Opening Day

It was early May last year, the sun was shining, and the water was shallow enough to wade through, yet deep enough to hold a number of trout.

First cast into the Fenton River yields a trout from a pool that drops off rapidly from land. I stay put.

Downstream head Becky and Mike. My hole yields nothing more over the next half hour, so downstream I go. Mike now has two. Becky has three. I don't mind being outfished by my son. I'm used to it and hope I had a hand in making him, at 17, the fisherman he is today.

On another stretch of the Fenton River nearly 10 years earlier I had to carry him through the water to an island, from which we'd often fish. Now, at 6-foot and 240 pounds, he will be a football captain at Manchester High next year, and the only thing I'm carrying is extra weight.

But to be outfished by my wife? Heck, she goes once or twice a year at most. I'm out there once or twice a week when I have the time. Still, as she says, it's all in the presentation. And she's presenting us quite a problem. She's winning. Sure, there's no scoreboard by river's edge, but there is in the mind's eye.

She already has the story of me forgetting to put the plug in the boat, putting it in Coventry Lake and wondering where the water was coming from. Or the time we launched, lunches packed, the day ahead holding so much promise, only to have me flood the engine and the airwaves with curses as we ate oh, maybe, 30 yards from shore. Or the time I left the live bait in the station wagon on our vacation to the Cape and it baked and baked. The smell was there for a month. Or the time ... well, you get it. Did she really need another story? "Oh, yes, I caught five and Jeff caught two," was all I could hear ringing in my ears.

The only one missing from this family fishing trip was Stacy. She's off at college, not that it really mattered. Just like Mike, she became indoctrinated into the world of fishing at a young age. She also left it at an early age. Might have had something to do with those cold, raw early April mornings, or the time I couldn't start the boat or the smell of the station wagon.

So now the only angling we do together is on our yearly shopping trip to New York City. We angle for the best prices on Canal Street and she's gotten pretty good at it. Just last year she got a Kate Spade knockoff purse for $27. Thirty, said the man. All I got is 27, said Stacy. If you've ever been on Canal Street, it's a sport of sorts, and not all that different from fishing. They bait you; you resist and move downstream. There are plenty of other places. But sooner or later, the presentation is right, and you're hooked. The victory is always in the final price, so the scoreboard read: Stacy 1, NYC 0.

Back to the Fenton and that scoreboard. By now, Becky has seemingly lost some interest and is more into the surrounding beauty and the warmth of the water. Mike and I pounce on her appreciation of life and pass her in number of fish landed. In the end, though, we know she could have outfished us this day if she had wanted.